Oracle (ORCL) Risk Factors

Our revenues, particularly certain of our cloud license and on-premise license revenues and hardware revenues, can be difficult to forecast. A substantial portion of our cloud license, on-premise license and hardware contracts is completed in the latter part of a quarter. Because a significant portion of our cost structure is largely fixed in the short term, sales and revenue shortfalls tend to have a disproportionately negative impact on our profitability. We typically have a number of large transactions each quarter, which increases the risk of fluctuations in our quarterly results. If we lose one or more of our key customers for any reason, or we experience a delay in even a small number of these large transactions, our quarterly sales, revenues and profitability could fall significantly short of our predictions. In addition, sudden shifts in regional or global economic or political activity may cause our sales forecasts to be inaccurate. In addition, we hold a portfolio of publicly traded equity investments and privately held debt and equity investments, including investments in Ampere Computing Holdings LLC (Ampere), a privately held related party entity in which we had an ownership interest of approximately 29% as of May 31, 2024. Any impairment charges and effect of changes in the fair values of certain of these investments are recorded as unrealized gains or losses as a component of consolidated net income in each period. The timing and amount of impairment charges or changes in fair value, if any, of these investments depends on factors beyond our control, including the perceived and actual performance of the companies or funds in which we invest, and are also subject to the general conditions of public and private equity markets, which are uncertain and have in the past varied, and may in the future vary, materially by period. Changes in the fair values of these investments, including Ampere, have contributed, and may in the future contribute, to volatility in our net income that is not reflective of our core businesses. The amount of our investments in Ampere could increase in future periods for a variety of reasons, including due to the potential exercise of put options by our co-investors or call options by us. If either of these options are exercised by us or our co-investors, we would acquire control of Ampere and its results would be consolidated with our results of operations. Ampere has generated net losses in the past and we currently expect such entity to generate net losses in future periods that we may need to consolidate into our results of operations in future periods.

As of May 31, 2024, we had an aggregate of $86.9 billion of outstanding indebtedness that will mature between calendar year 2024 and calendar year 2061. Our ability to pay interest and repay the principal for our indebtedness is dependent upon our ability to manage our business operations, generate sufficient cash flows to service such debt and the other factors discussed in this Risk Factors section. There can be no assurance that we will be able to manage any of these risks successfully. We expect to refinance a portion of our outstanding debt as it matures. There is a risk that we may not be able to refinance existing debt or that the terms of any refinancing may not be as favorable as the terms of our existing debt. Furthermore, if prevailing interest rates or other factors at the time of refinancing result in higher interest rates upon refinancing, then the interest expense relating to that refinanced indebtedness would increase. Should we incur future increases in interest expense, our ability to utilize certain of our foreign tax credits to reduce our U.S. federal income tax could be limited, which could unfavorably affect our provision for income taxes and effective tax rate. In addition, changes to our outlook or credit rating or a withdrawal by any rating agency could negatively affect the value of both our debt and equity securities and increase the interest amounts we pay on certain outstanding or future debt. These risks could adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations.

As a participant in the healthcare industry, certain of our operations and relationships, and those of our customers, are regulated by several U.S. federal, state, local and foreign governmental entities. The impact of these regulations on us is both direct and also indirect, in terms of government program requirements applicable to our customers for the use of health IT. Even though we may not be directly regulated by specific healthcare laws and regulations, our products and services must be capable of being used by our customers in a way that complies with those laws and regulations. There are significant, wide-ranging and rapidly evolving regulations both within and outside the U.S., such as regulations in the areas of healthcare fraud, information sharing, e-prescribing, claims processing and transmission, healthcare devices, the security and privacy of patient data and interoperability standards, that may be directly or indirectly applicable to our operations and relationships or the business practices of our customers. Specific risks include, but are not limited to, the following: - The U.S. and other countries have regulations in place related to medical devices that now, or may in the future, apply to certain of our healthcare products and services. If any of our healthcare products and services are deemed to be actively regulated medical devices by regulatory agencies in countries where we do business, we could be subject to extensive requirements governing pre- and post-marketing activities, including pre-market notification clearance. - Various U.S. federal, state and non-government agencies continue to generate requirements for the use of certified electronic health record technology (CEHRT), and CEHRT continues to be a requirement of participation in federal healthcare programs in order to receive reimbursement for health items and services provided by certain of our customers to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. We expect the regulations establishing the certification and interoperability standards for CEHRT will continue to be updated to emphasize interoperability, consumer engagement, patient safety and health information privacy and security. Complying with these regulations globally is expensive and could subject us to unanticipated and significant delays. If we fail to comply sufficiently with these and other regulations, it could negatively impact our ability to continue to develop, distribute and deliver certain of our healthcare products and services, and we could suffer fines or penalties.

We are subject to various legal proceedings. Litigation can be lengthy, expensive and disruptive to our operations, and can divert our management's attention away from running our core business. The results of our litigation also cannot be predicted with certainty. Even a favorable judgment may be subject to appeals leading to protracted litigation, additional costs and the prospect that our desired outcome will be overturned. An adverse decision could result in monetary damages or injunctive relief that could affect our business, operating results or financial condition. Additional information regarding certain of the lawsuits we are involved in is discussed under Note 16 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report.

As a multinational corporation, we incur income taxes as well as non-income based taxes (such as payroll, sales, use, property and value-added taxes) in both the U.S. and various foreign jurisdictions. Significant uncertainties exist with respect to the application of the various taxes to the businesses in which we engage, often requiring that we make judgments in determining our tax liabilities and worldwide provision for income taxes. We are regularly under audit by tax authorities in the U.S. and internationally, which has led to disagreements regarding our treatment of various items, including our intercompany transfer prices and calculations and the applicability of withholding taxes to our cross-border transactions. Any unfavorable resolution of these tax audits and controversies could cause our tax liabilities to increase and may have a material and adverse impact on our provision for income taxes and effective tax rate. Although we believe that our income and non-income based tax estimates are reasonable, there is no assurance that the final determination of tax audits or disputes will not be different from what is reflected in our historical income tax provisions and tax accruals. Countries around the world continually consider and make changes to relevant tax, accounting and other laws, treaties, regulations, guidance and interpretations. In the U.S., various legislative proposals, if enacted, may substantially raise U.S. income taxes on our domestic and international profits. Such unfavorable tax proposals, the prospects for which depend to a significant degree on the U.S. political landscape, create the potential for added volatility in our quarterly provision for income taxes and could have a material adverse impact on our future income tax provisions and effective tax rate. Other countries also continue to consider changes to their tax laws that could negatively affect us by increasing taxes imposed on our international revenue streams, operations and cross-border transactions, including the imposition of taxes targeted at digital technology businesses and changes in withholding tax rules. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Group of Twenty (G20), together with over 140 participating countries, have developed a two-pillar framework calling for a 15% global minimum tax on multinational corporate groups, which has been adopted in many jurisdictions, and that would provide greater taxing rights to market jurisdictions where customers or users are located. These changes may materially increase the level of income tax on our international profits. Our future income tax provisions and effective tax rate could materially increase under the tax changes discussed above or if other changes are made to applicable tax laws and rules in the U.S. or in other countries in which we do business. Our provision for income taxes also could be adversely affected by changes in the mix of income earned or losses incurred in jurisdictions with differing statutory tax rates, fluctuations in our stock price and level of stock-based compensation expense, changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets or liabilities and by other factors.

We face intense competition in all aspects of our business. The nature of the IT industry creates a competitive landscape that is constantly evolving as firms emerge, expand or are acquired, as technology evolves and as delivery models change. Our enterprise cloud, license and hardware offerings compete directly with certain offerings from some of the largest and most competitive companies in the world. In addition, due to the low barriers to entry in many of our market segments, new technologies and new and growing competitors frequently emerge to challenge our offerings. We believe many vendors spend amounts in excess of what Oracle spends to develop and market applications and infrastructure technologies including databases, middleware products, application development tools, business applications, collaboration products and business intelligence, compute, storage and networking products, among others, which compete with Oracle applications and infrastructure offerings. In addition, use of our competitors' technologies can influence a customer's purchasing decision or create an environment that makes it less efficient to utilize or migrate to Oracle products and services. For example, we offer our customers multicloud services whereby our customers can combine cloud services from multiple clouds with the goal of optimizing cost, functionality and performance. OCI's multicloud services work with a number of our competitors' products, including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. This multicloud strategy could lead our customers to migrate away from our cloud offerings to our competitors' products or limit their purchases of additional Oracle products, either of which could adversely affect our revenues and profitability. Our competitors may also adopt business practices that provide customers access to competing products and services on terms that we may not generally find acceptable, which may convince customers to purchase competitor products and services. We could lose customers if our competitors introduce new competitive products, add new functionality, acquire competitive products, reduce prices, better execute on their sales and marketing strategies, offer more flexible business practices, provide debt or equity financing to customers or form strategic alliances with other companies. Mergers, consolidations or alliances among our competitors, or acquisitions of our competitors by large companies may result in increased competition. If our competitors offer deep discounts on certain products or services or develop products that the marketplace considers more valuable, we may need to lower prices, introduce pricing models and offerings or offer other terms that are less favorable to us to compete successfully. Any such changes may reduce revenues and margins and could adversely affect operating results. Additionally, the increasing prevalence of cloud delivery models offered by us and our competitors may unfavorably impact the pricing of our other cloud and license, hardware and services offerings, and we may also incur increased cloud delivery expenses as we expand our cloud operations and update our infrastructure, all of which could reduce our revenues and profitability. Our license support fees and hardware support fees are generally priced as a percentage of our net license fees and net new hardware products fees, respectively. Our competitors may offer lower pricing on their support offerings, which could put pressure on us to further discount our offerings. If we do not adapt our pricing models to reflect changes in customer use of our products, changes in customer demand or increased competition, our revenues could decrease.

Our business is influenced by a range of factors that are beyond our control and that we have no comparative advantage in forecasting. These include: - general economic and business conditions;- overall demand for enterprise cloud, license and hardware products and services;- governmental budgetary constraints or shifts in government spending priorities; and - general legal, regulatory and political developments. Macroeconomic developments such as the global or regional economic effects resulting from elevated inflation and interest rates, limited liquidity, adverse developments affecting financial institutions, the current wars, evolving trade policies between the U.S. and international trade partners, or the occurrence of similar events in other countries that lead to uncertainty or instability in economic, political or market conditions could negatively affect our business, operating results, financial condition and outlook, which, in turn, could adversely affect our stock price. Any general weakening of, and related declining corporate confidence in, the global economy or the curtailment of government or corporate spending could cause current or potential customers to reduce or eliminate their IT budgets and spending, which could cause customers to delay, decrease or cancel purchases of our products and services or cause customers not to pay us or to delay paying us for previously purchased products and services. If any parties with whom we conduct business or invest our cash or cash equivalents are unable to meet their obligations to us, our business could be adversely affected. Bank failures or issues in the broader U.S. or global financial systems may have an impact on the broader capital markets and, in turn, our ability to access those markets. In addition, international, regional or domestic political unrest and the related potential impact on global stability, terrorist attacks and the potential for other hostilities in various parts of the world, public health crises and natural disasters continue to contribute to a climate of economic and political uncertainty that could adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition, including our revenue growth and profitability. These factors generally have the strongest effect on our sales of cloud license and on-premise license, hardware and related services and, to a lesser extent, also may affect our renewal rates for license support and our subscription-based cloud offerings.

We derive a substantial portion of our revenues from, and have significant operations, outside of the U.S., and in both our U.S. and non-U.S. operations we serve customers based in or with ties to numerous jurisdictions around the world. Compliance with international and U.S. laws and regulations that apply to our international operations increases our cost of doing business. These laws and regulations include data privacy requirements, labor relations laws, tax laws, foreign currency-related regulations, competition/antitrust regulations, anti-bribery laws and other laws prohibiting payments to governmental officials such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), market access regulations, tariffs, and import, export and general trade regulations, including but not limited to economic sanctions and embargos. Violations of these laws and regulations could result in monetary fines, civil and/or criminal penalties, enforcement actions against us, our officers or our employees, and prohibitions on the conduct of our business, including disgorgement, the loss of trade privileges, and other remedial measures. Any such violations could result in prohibitions on our ability to offer our products and services in one or more countries or territories or to certain entities, could delay or prevent potential acquisitions and could also materially damage our reputation, our brand, our international expansion efforts, our ability to attract and retain employees, our business and our operating results. Changes to sanctions or export control regulations in the U.S. and the other jurisdictions where we currently operate or have dealings, or in the future may operate or have dealings, can require suspension or termination of business (including financial transactions) in or with certain countries and territories or with certain customers. In addition, we continue to monitor relations between the U.S. and the Russian Federation, the Republic of Belarus and the People's Republic of China, among others. It is difficult to anticipate the effect international relations may have on us. Compliance with any further economic sanctions, export controls or other regulatory restrictions (and any countermeasures thereto) taken by the U.S. or other countries could prevent us from serving certain customers or restrict us or our customers from operating in specific jurisdictions, which could have an adverse effect on our operations and results of operations. For example, in April 2024, the U.S. President signed into law a bill that will make it unlawful to provide internet hosting services to TikTok that are used to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of TikTok for users within the U.S. if certain steps are not taken by TikTok's owners within a set time frame. If we are unable to provide those services to TikTok, and if we cannot redeploy that capacity in a timely manner, our revenues and profits would be adversely impacted. Compliance with these laws may increase our expenses as we engage specialized or other additional resources to assist us with our compliance efforts. Our success depends, in part, on our ability to anticipate these risks and manage these difficulties. We monitor our operations and investigate allegations of improprieties relating to transactions and the way in which such transactions are recorded. Where circumstances warrant, we provide information and report our findings to government authorities, and in some circumstances such authorities conduct their own investigations and we respond to their requests or demands for information. No assurance can be given that action will not be taken by such authorities or that our compliance program will prove effective. We are also subject to a variety of other risks and challenges in managing an organization operating globally, including those related to: - general economic conditions in each country or region;- political unrest, terrorism and war, including but not limited to the current Russia-Ukraine war, the economic impact thereof and the potential to subject our business to materially adverse consequences should the situation escalate beyond its current scope, including, among other potential impacts, the geographic proximity of the situation relative to the rest of Europe, where a material portion of our business is carried out;- the potential for other hostilities, including but not limited to further destabilization in the Middle East and tensions between China and Taiwan;- public health risks, social risks and supporting infrastructure stability risks, particularly in areas in which we have significant operations;- fluctuations in currency exchange rates and related impacts on customer demand and our operating results;- difficulties in accessing or transferring funds from or converting currencies in certain countries that could lead to a devaluation of our net assets, in particular our cash assets, in that country's currency;- regulatory changes, including government austerity measures in certain countries that we may not be able to sufficiently plan for or avoid that may unexpectedly impair bank deposits or other cash assets that we hold in these countries or that impose additional taxes that we may be required to pay in these countries;- common local business behaviors or regulatory requirements that conflict with our business ethics, practices and conduct policies;- longer payment cycles and difficulties in collecting accounts receivable;- overlapping tax regimes; and - reduced protection for intellectual property rights in some countries. The variety of risks and challenges listed above could also disrupt or otherwise negatively impact our supply chain operations and sales of our products and services in affected countries or regions. As the majority shareholder of Oracle Financial Services Software Limited, a publicly traded company in India, and Oracle Corporation Japan, a publicly traded company in Japan, we face several additional risks, including being subject to local securities regulations and being unable to exert full control that we would otherwise have if these entities were wholly-owned subsidiaries.

A significant portion of our critical business operations are concentrated in a few geographic areas, some of which include emerging market international locations that may be less stable relative to running such business operations solely within the U.S. We are a highly automated business and a disruption or failure of our systems, supply chains and processes could cause delays in completing sales, providing services, including some of our cloud offerings, and enabling a seamless customer experience with respect to our customer facing back-office processes. Although the Oracle Cloud is designed to automatically redirect traffic to an alternate facility, in the event of a severe impact to one facility, a major natural disaster, political, social or other disruption to infrastructure that supports our operations or other catastrophic event or the effects of climate change (such as increased storm severity, drought and pandemics) that results in the destruction or disruption of any of our critical business operations, supply chains or IT systems could severely affect our ability to conduct normal business operations and, as a result, our future operating results could be materially and adversely affected.

We conduct a significant number of transactions and hold cash in currencies other than the U.S. Dollar. Changes in the values of major foreign currencies, particularly the Australian Dollar, British Pound, Brazilian Real, Canadian Dollar, Euro, Indian Rupee, Japanese Yen and Saudi Riyal, relative to the U.S. Dollar can significantly affect our total assets, revenues, operating results and cash flows, which are reported in U.S. Dollars. Fluctuations in foreign currency rates, including the strengthening of the U.S. Dollar against the Euro and most other major international currencies, adversely affects our revenue growth in terms of the amounts that we report in U.S. Dollars after converting our foreign currency results into U.S. Dollars and in terms of actual demand for our products and services as certain of these products may become relatively more expensive for foreign currency-based enterprises to purchase. In addition, currency variations can adversely affect margins on sales of our products in countries outside of the U.S. Generally, our reported revenues and operating results are adversely affected when the dollar strengthens relative to other currencies and are positively affected when the dollar weakens. In addition, our reported assets generally are adversely affected when the dollar strengthens relative to other currencies as a portion of our consolidated cash and bank deposits, among other assets, are held in foreign currencies and reported in U.S. Dollars. In addition, we incur foreign currency transaction gains and losses, primarily related to sublicense fees and other intercompany agreements among us and our subsidiaries that we expect to cash settle in the near term, which are charged to earnings in the period incurred. We have a program which primarily utilizes foreign currency forward contracts designed to offset the risks associated with certain foreign currency exposures. We may suspend the program from time to time. As part of this program, we enter into foreign currency forward contracts so that increases or decreases in our foreign currency exposures are offset at least in part by gains or losses on the foreign currency forward contracts in an effort to mitigate the risks and volatility associated with our foreign currency transaction gains or losses. A large portion of our consolidated operations are international, and we expect that we will continue to realize gains or losses with respect to our foreign currency exposures, net of gains or losses from our foreign currency forward contracts, including the cost to obtain such contracts. For example, we will experience foreign currency gains and losses in certain instances if it is not possible or cost-effective to hedge our foreign currency exposures, if our hedging efforts are ineffective, or should we suspend our foreign currency forward contract program. Our ultimate realized loss or gain with respect to currency fluctuations will generally depend on the size and type of cross-currency exposures that we enter into, the currency exchange rates associated with these exposures and changes in those rates, whether we have entered into foreign currency forward contracts to offset these exposures and any related fees paid to purchase such contracts, and other factors. All of these factors could materially impact our results of operations, financial position and cash flows. We have incurred foreign currency losses associated with the devaluation of currencies in certain highly inflationary economies relative to the U.S. Dollar. We could incur future losses in emerging market countries and other countries where we do business should their currencies become designated as highly inflationary.